He would not taste, but swallowed life at once;
And scarce had reached his prime ere he had bolted,
With all its garnish, mixed of sweet and sour,
Full fourscore years. For he, in truth, did wot not
What most he craved, and so devoured all;
Then, with his gases, followed Indigestion,
Making it food for night-mares and their foals.
_Bridgen_.[5]
It was the opinion of an ancient philosopher, that we can have no want
for which Nature does not provide an appropriate gratification. As it
regards our physical wants, this appears to be true. But there are
moral cravings which extend beyond the world we live in; and, were we
in a heathen age, would serve us with an unanswerable argument for the
immortality of the soul. That these cravings are felt by all, there
can be no doubt; yet that all feel them in the same degree would be as
absurd to suppose, as that every man possesses equal sensibility or
understanding. Boswell's desires, from his own account, seem to have
been limited to reading Shakspeare in the other world,--whether with
or without his commentators, he has left us to guess; and Newton
probably pined for the sight of those distant stars whose light has
not yet reached us. What originally was the particular craving of my
own mind I cannot now recall; but that I had, even in my boyish days,
an insatiable desire after something which always eluded me, I well
remember. As I grew into manhood, my desires became less definite; and
by the time I had passed through college, they seemed to have resolved
themselves into a general passion for _doing_.
It is needless to enumerate the different subjects which one after
another engaged me. Mathematics, metaphysics, natural and moral
philosophy, were each begun, and each in turn given up in a passion of
love and disgust.
It is the fate of all inordinate passions to meet their extremes;
so was it with mine. Could I have pursued any of these studies with
moderation, I might have been to this day, perhaps, both learned and
happy. But I could be moderate in nothing. Not content with being
employed, I must always be _busy_; and business, as every one
knows, if long continued, must end in fatigue, and fatigue in disgust,
and disgust in change, if that be practicable,--which unfortunately
was my case.
The restlessness occasioned by these half-finished studies brought
on a severe fit of self-examination. Why is it, I asked myself, that
these learned works, which have each furnished their authors with
sufficient excitement to effect their completion, should thus weary me
before I get midway into them? It is plain enough. As a reader I
am merely a recipient, but the composer is an active agent; a vast
difference! And now I can account for the singular pleasure, which
a certain bad poet of my acquaintance always took in inflicting his
verses on every one who would listen to him; each perusal being but a
sort of mental echo of the original bliss of composition. I will set
about writing immediately.
Having, time out of mind, heard the epithet _great_ coupled with
Historians, it was that, I believe, inclined me to write a history.
I chose my subject, and began collating, and transcribing, night and
day, as if I had not another hour to live; and on I went with the
industry of a steam-engine; when it one day occurred to me, that,
though I had been laboring for months, I had not yet had occasion for
one original thought. Pshaw! said I, 't is only making new clothes out
of old ones. I will have nothing more to do with history.
As it is natural for a mind suddenly disgusted with mechanic toil to
seek relief from its opposite, it can easily be imagined that my next
resource was Poetry. Every one rhymes now-a-days, and so can I. Shall
I write an Epic, or a Tragedy, or a Metrical Romance? Epics are out of
fashion; even Homer and Virgil would hardly be read in our time, but
that people are unwilling to admit their schooling to have been thrown
away. As to Tragedy, I am a modern, and it is a settled thing that no
modern _can_ write a tragedy; so I must not attempt that. Then
for Metrical Romances,--why, they are now manufactured; and, as the
Edinburgh Review says, may be "imported" by us "in bales." I will bind
myself to no particular class, but give free play to my imagination.
With this resolution I went to bed, as one going to be inspired. The
morning came; I ate my breakfast, threw up the window, and placed
myself in my elbow-chair before it. An hour passed, and nothing
occurred to me. But this I ascribed to a fit of laughter that seized
me, at seeing a duck made drunk by eating rum-cherries. I turned my
back on the window. Another hour followed, then another, and another:
I was still as far from poetry as ever; every object about me seemed
bent against my abstraction; the card-racks fascinating me like
serpents, and compelling me to read, as if I would get them by heart,
"Dr. Joblin," "Mr. Cumberback," "Mr. Milton Bull," &c. &c. I took up
my pen, drew a sheet of paper from my writing-desk, and fixed my eyes
upon that;--'t was all in vain; I saw nothing on it but the watermark,
_D. Ames_. I laid down the pen, closed my eyes, and threw my
head back in the chair. "Are you waiting to be shaved, Sir?" said
a familiar voice. I started up, and overturned my servant. "No,
blockhead!"--"I am waiting to be inspired";--but this I added
mentally. What is the cause of my difficulty? said I. Something within
me seemed to reply, in the words of Lear, "Nothing comes of nothing."
Then I must seek a subject. I ran over a dozen in a few minutes, chose
one after another, and, though twenty thoughts very readily occurred
on each, I was fain to reject them all; some for wanting pith, some
for belonging to prose, and others for having been worn out in the
service of other poets. In a word, my eyes began to open on the truth,
and I felt convinced that _that_ only was poetry which a man
writes because he cannot help writing; the irrepressible effluence
of his secret being on every thing in sympathy with it,--a kind of
_flowering_ of the soul amid the warmth and the light of nature.
I am no poet, I exclaimed, and I will not disfigure Mr. Ames with
commonplace verses.
I know not how I should have borne this second disappointment, had not
the title of a new Novel, which then came into my head, suggested a
trial in that branch of letters. I will write a Novel. Having come to
this determination, the next thing was to collect materials. They must
be sought after, said I, for my late experiment has satisfied me that
I might wait for ever in my elbow-chair, and they would never come to
me; they must be toiled for,--not in books, if I would not deal in
second-hand,--but in the world, that inexhaustible storehouse of
all kinds of originals. I then turned over in my mind the various
characters I had met with in life; amongst these a few only seemed
fitted for any story, and those rather as accessories; such as a
politician who hated popularity, a sentimental grave-digger, and a
metaphysical rope-dancer; but for a hero, the grand nucleus of my
fable, I was sorely at a loss. This, however, did not discourage me. I
knew he might be found in the world, if I would only take the trouble
to look for him. For this purpose I jumped into the first stage-coach
that passed my door; it was immaterial whither bound, my object being
men, not places. My first day's journey offered nothing better than a
sailor who rebuked a member of Congress for swearing. But at the third
stage, on the second day, as we were changing horses, I had the good
fortune to light on a face which gave promise of all I wanted. It was
so remarkable that I could not take my eyes from it; the forehead
might have been called handsome but for a pair of enormous eyebrows,
that seemed to project from it like the quarter-galleries of a ship,
and beneath these were a couple of small, restless, gray eyes, which,
glancing in every direction from under their shaggy brows, sparkled
like the intermittent light of fire-flies; in the nose there was
nothing remarkable, except that it was crested by a huge wart with a
small grove of black hairs; but the mouth made ample amends, being
altogether indescribable, for it was so variable in its expression,
that I could not tell whether it had most of the sardonic, the
benevolent, or the sanguinary, appearing to exhibit them all in
succession with equal vividness. My attention, however, was mainly
fixed by the sanguinary; it came across me like an east wind, and
I felt a cold sweat damping my linen; and when this was suddenly
succeeded by the benevolent, I was sure I had got at the secret of
his character,--no less than that of a murderer haunted by remorse.
Delighted with this discovery, I made up my mind to follow the owner
of the face wherever he went, till I should learn his history. I
accordingly made an end of my journey for the present, upon learning
that the stranger was to pass some time in the place where we stopped.
For three days I made minute inquiries; but all I could gather was,
that he had been a great traveller, though of what country no one
could tell me. On the fourth day, finding him on the move, I took
passage in the same coach. Now, said I, is my time of harvest. But I
was mistaken; for, in spite of all the lures which I threw out to
draw him into a communicative humor, I could get nothing from him but
monosyllables. So far from abating my ardor, this reserve only the
more whetted my curiosity. At last we stopped at a pleasant village
in New Jersey. Here he seemed a little better known; the innkeeper
inquiring after his health, and the hostler asking if the balls he
had supplied him with fitted the barrels of his pistols. The latter
inquiry I thought was accompanied by a significant glance, that
indicated a knowledge on the hostler's part of more than met the ear;
I determined therefore to sound him. After a few general remarks, that
had nothing to do with any thing, by way of introduction, I began by
hinting some random surmises as to the use to which the stranger might
have put the pistols he spoke of; inquired whether he was in the habit
of loading them at night; whether he slept with them under his pillow;
if he was in the practice of burning a light while he slept; and if
he did not sometimes awake the family by groans, or by walking with
agitated steps in his chamber. But it was all in vain, the man
protesting that he never knew any thing ill of him. Perhaps, thought
I, the hostler having overheard his midnight wanderings, and detected
his crime, is paid for keeping the secret. I pumped the landlord, and
the landlady, and the barmaid, and the chambermaid, and the waiters,
and the cook, and every thing that could speak in the house; still to
no purpose, each ending his reply with, "Lord, Sir, he's as honest a
gentleman, for aught I know, as any in the world"; then would come a
question,--"But perhaps _you_ know something of him yourself?"
Whether my answer, though given in the negative, was uttered in such a
tone as to imply an affirmative, thereby exciting suspicion, I cannot
tell; but it is certain that I soon after perceived a visible change
towards him in the deportment of the whole household. When he spoke to
the waiters, their jaws fell, their fingers spread, their eyes rolled,
with every symptom of involuntary action; and once, when he asked the
landlady to take a glass of wine with him, I saw her, under pretence
of looking out of the window, throw it into the street; in short, the
very scullion fled at his approach, and a chambermaid dared not
enter his room unless under guard of a large mastiff. That these
circumstances were not unobserved by him will appear by what follows.
Though I had come no nearer to facts, this general suspicion, added to
the remarkable circumstance that no one had ever heard his name (being
known only as _the gentleman_) gave every day new life to my
hopes. He is the very man, said I; and I began to revel in all the
luxury of detection, when, as I was one night undressing for bed, my
attention was caught by the following letter on my table.
"SIR,
"If you are the gentleman you would be thought, you will not
refuse satisfaction for the diabolical calumnies you have so
unprovokedly circulated against an innocent man.
"Your obedient servant,
"TIMOLEON BUB.
"P.S. I shall expect you at five o'clock to-morrow morning, at the
three elms, by the river-side."
This invitation, as may be well imagined, discomposed me not a
little. Who Mr. Bub was, or in what way I had injured him, puzzled
me exceedingly. Perhaps, thought I, he has mistaken me for another
person; if so, my appearing on the ground will soon set matters right.
With this persuasion I went to bed, somewhat calmer than I should
otherwise have been; nay, I was even composed enough to divert myself
with the folly of one bearing so vulgar an appellation taking it into
his head to play the _man of honor_, and could not help a waggish
feeling of curiosity to see if his name and person were in keeping.
I woke myself in the morning with a loud laugh, for I had dreamt of
meeting, in the redoubtable Mr. Bub, a little pot-bellied man, with a
round face, a red snub-nose, and a pair of gooseberry wall-eyes. My
fit of pleasantry was far from passed off when I came in sight of the
fatal elms. I saw my antagonist pacing the ground with considerable
violence. Ah! said I, he is trying to escape from his unheroic name!
and I laughed again at the conceit; but, as I drew a little nearer,
there appeared a majestic altitude in his figure very unlike what I
had seen in my dream, and my laugh began to stiffen into a kind of
rigid grin. There now came upon me something very like a misgiving
that the affair might turn out to be no joke. I felt an unaccountable
wish that this Mr. Bub had never been born; still I advanced: but
if an aërolite had fallen at my feet, I could not have been more
startled, than when I found in the person of my challenger--the
mysterious stranger. The consequences of my curiosity immediately
rushed upon me, and I was no longer at a loss in what way I had
injured him. All my merriment seemed to curdle within me; and I felt
like a dog that had got his head into a jug, and suddenly finds he
cannot extricate it. "Well met, Sir," said the stranger; "now
take your ground, and abide the consequences of your infernal
insinuations." "Upon my word," replied I,--"upon my honor, Sir,"--and
there I stuck, for in truth I knew not what it was I was going to say;
when the stranger's second, advancing, exclaimed, in a voice which
I immediately recognized, "Why, zounds! Rainbow, are _you_ the
man?" "Is it you, Harman?" "What!" continued he, "my old classmate
Rainbow turned slanderer? Impossible! Indeed, Mr. Bub, there must be
some mistake here." "None, Sir," said the stranger; "I have it on
the authority of my respectable landlord, that, ever since this
gentleman's arrival, he has been incessant in his attempts to blacken
my character with every person at the inn." "Nay, my friend"--But I
put an end to Harman's further defence of me, by taking him aside,
and frankly confessing the whole truth. It was with some difficulty I
could get through the explanation, being frequently interrupted with
bursts of laughter from my auditor; which, indeed, I now began to
think very natural. In a word, to cut the story short, my friend
having repeated the conference verbatim to Mr. Bub, he was
good-natured enough to join in the mirth, saying, with one of his best
sardonics, he "had always had a misgiving that his unlucky ugly face
would one day or other be the death of somebody." Well, we passed the
day together, and having cracked a social bottle after dinner, parted,
I believe, as heartily friends as we should have been (which is saying
a great deal) had he indeed proved the favorite villain in my Novel.
But, alas! with the loss of my villain, away went the Novel.
Here again I was at a stand; and in vain did I torture my brains
for another pursuit. But why should I seek one? In fortune I have a
competence,--why not be as independent in mind? There are thousands in
the world whose sole object in life is to attain the means of living
without toil; and what is any literary pursuit but a series of mental
labor, ay, and oftentimes more wearying to the spirits than that of
the body. Upon the whole, I came to the conclusion, that it was a very
foolish thing to do any thing. So I seriously set about trying to do
nothing.
Well, what with whistling, hammering down all the nails in the house
that had started, paring my nails, pulling my fire to pieces and
rebuilding it, changing my clothes to full dress though I dined alone,
trying to make out the figure of a Cupid on my discolored ceiling, and
thinking of a lady I had not thought of for ten years before, I got
along the first week tolerably well. But by the middle of the second
week,--'t was horrible! the hours seemed to roll over me like
mill-stones. When I awoke in the morning I felt like an Indian
devotee, the day coming upon me like the great temple of Juggernaut;
cracking of my bones beginning after breakfast; and if I had any
respite, it was seldom for more than half an hour, when a newspaper
seemed to stop the wheels;--then away they went, crack, crack, noon
and afternoon, till I found myself by night reduced to a perfect
jelly,--good for nothing but to be ladled into bed, with a greater
horror than ever at the thought of sunrise.
This will never do, said I; a toad in the heart of a tree lives a more
comfortable life than a nothing-doing man; and I began to perceive
a very deep meaning in the truism of "something being better than
nothing." But is a precise object always necessary to the mind? No: if
it be but occupied, no matter with what. That may easily be done.
I have already tried the sciences, and made abortive attempts in
literature, but I have never yet tried what is called general
reading;--that, thank Heaven, is a resource inexhaustible. I will
henceforth read only for amusement. My first experiment in this way
was on Voyages and Travels, with occasional dippings into Shipwrecks,
Murders, and Ghost-stories. It succeeded beyond my hopes; month after
month passing away like days, and as for days,--I almost fancied that
I could see the sun move. How comfortable, thought I, thus to travel
over the world in my closet! how delightful to double Cape Horn and
cross the African Desert in my rocking-chair,--to traverse Caffraria
and the Mogul's dominions in the same pleasant vehicle! This is living
to some purpose; one day dining on barbecued pigs in Otaheite; the
next in danger of perishing amidst the snows of Terra del Fuego; then
to have a lion cross my path in the heart of Africa; to run for my
life from a wounded rhinoceros, and sit, by mistake, on a sleeping
boa-constrictor;--this, this, said I, is life! Even the dangers of the
sea were but healthful stimulants. If I met with a tornado, it was
only an agreeable variety; water-spouts and ice-islands gave me no
manner of alarm; and I have seldom been more composed than when
catching a whale. In short, the ease with which I thus circumnavigated
the globe, and conversed with all its varieties of inhabitants,
expanded my benevolence; I found every place, and everybody in it,
even to the Hottentots, vastly agreeable. But, alas! I was doomed
to discover that this could not last for ever. Though I was still
curious, there were no longer curiosities; for the world is limited,
and new countries, and new people, like every thing else, wax stale on
acquaintance; even ghosts and hurricanes become at last familiar; and
books grow old, like those who read them.
I was now at what sailors call a dead lift; being too old to build
castles for the future, and too dissatisfied with the life I had
led to look back on the past. In this state of mind, I bought me a
snuffbox; for, as I could not honestly recommend my disjointed self
to any decent woman, it seemed a kind of duty in me to contract such
habits as would effectually prevent my taking in the lady I had once
thought of. I set to, snuffing away till I made my nose sore, and
lost my appetite. I then threw my snuffbox into the fire, and took to
cigars. This change appeared to revive me. For a short time I thought
myself in Elysium, and wondered I had never tried them before. Thou
fragrant weed! O, that I were a Dutch poet, I exclaimed, that I might
render due honor to thy unspeakable virtues! Ineffable tobacco! Every
puff seemed like oil poured upon troubled waters, and I felt an
inexpressible calmness stealing over my frame; in truth, it seemed
like a benevolent spirit reconciling my soul to my body. But
moderation, as I have before said, was never one of my virtues. I
walked my room, pouring out volumes like a moving glass-house. My
apartment was soon filled with smoke; I looked in the glass and hardly
knew myself, my eyes peering at me, through the curling atmosphere,
like those of a poodle. I then retired to the opposite end, and
surveyed the furniture; nothing retained its original form or
position;--the tables and chairs seemed to loom from the floor, and my
grandfather's picture to thrust forward its nose like a French-horn,
while that of my grandmother, who was reckoned a beauty in her day,
looked, in her hoop, like her husband's wig-block stuck on a tub.
Whether this was a signal for the fiends within me to begin their
operations, I know not; but from that day I began to be what is called
nervous. The uninterrupted health I had hitherto enjoyed now seemed
the greatest curse that could have befallen me. I had never had the
usual itinerant distempers; it was very unlikely that I should always
escape them; and the dread of their coming upon me in my advanced age
made me perfectly miserable. I scarcely dared to stir abroad;
had sandbags put to my doors to keep out the measles; forbade my
neighbours' children playing in my yard to avoid the whooping-cough;
and, to prevent infection from the small-pox, I ordered all my male
servants' heads to be shaved, made the coachman and footman wear tow
wigs, and had them both regularly smoked whenever they returned from
the neighbouring town, before they were allowed to enter my presence.
Nor were these all my miseries; in fact, they were but a sort of
running base to a thousand other strange and frightful fancies; the
mere skeleton to a whole body-corporate of horrors. I became dreamy,
was haunted by what I had read, frequently finding a Hottentot, or a
boa-constrictor, in my bed. Sometimes I fancied myself buried in one
of the pyramids of Egypt, breaking my shins against the bones of a
sacred cow. Then I thought myself a kangaroo, unable to move because
somebody had cut off my tail.
In this miserable state I one evening rushed out of my house. I know
not how far, or how long, I had been from home, when, hearing a
well-known voice, I suddenly stopped. It seemed to belong to a face
that I knew; yet how I should know it somewhat puzzled me, being then
fully persuaded that I was a Chinese Josh. My friend (as I afterwards
learned he was) invited me to go to his club. This, thought I, is one
of my worshippers, and they have a right to carry me wherever they
please; accordingly I suffered myself to be led.
I soon found myself in an American tavern, and in the midst of a dozen
grave gentlemen who were emptying a large bowl of punch. They each
saluted me, some calling me by name, others saying they were happy to
make my acquaintance; but what appeared quite unaccountable was my not
only understanding their language, but knowing it to be English. A
kind of reaction now began to take place in my brain. Perhaps, said I,
I am not a Josh. I was urged to pledge my friend in a glass of punch;
I did so; my friend's friend, and his friend, and all the rest, in
succession, begged to have the same honor; I complied, again
and again, till at last, the punch having fairly turned my
head topsy-turvy, righted my understanding; and I found myself
_myself_.
This happy change gave a pleasant fillip to my spirits. I returned
home, found no monster in my bed, and slept quietly till near noon the
next day. I arose with a slight headache and a great admiration
of punch; resolving, if I did not catch the measles from my late
adventure, to make a second visit to the club. No symptoms appearing,
I went again; and my reception was such as led to a third, and a
fourth, and a fifth visit, when I became a regular member. I believe
my inducement to this was a certain unintelligible something in three
or four of my new associates, which at once gratified and kept alive
my curiosity, in their letting out just enough of themselves while I
was with them to excite me when alone to speculate on what was kept
back. I wondered I had never met with such characters in books; and
the kind of interest they awakened began gradually to widen to others.
Henceforth I will live in the world, said I; 't is my only remedy. A
man's own affairs are soon conned; he gets them by heart till they
haunt him when he would be rid of them; but those of another can
be known only in part, while that which remains unrevealed is a
never-ending stimulus to curiosity. The only natural mode, therefore,
of preventing the mind preying on itself,--the only rational, because
the only interminable employment,--is to be busy about other people's
business.
The variety of objects which this new course of life each day
presented, brought me at length to a state of sanity; at least, I was
no longer disposed to conjure up remote dangers to my door, or chew
the cud on my indigested past reading; though sometimes, I confess,
when I have been tempted to meddle with a very bad character, I have
invariably been threatened with a relapse; which leads me to think the
existence of some secret affinity between rogues and boa-constrictors
is not unlikely. In a short time, however, I had every reason to
believe myself completely cured; for the days began to appear of their
natural length, and I no longer saw every thing through a pair of
blue spectacles, but found nature diversified by a thousand beautiful
colors, and the people about me a thousand times more interesting than
hyenas or Hottentots. The world is now my only study, and I trust I
shall stick to it for the sake of my health.